An interview with an ex-school bully

Posted by: Vanessa

On 2 March, we conducted an interview with an ex-school bully. Our respondent is currently studying in local polytechnic and has agreed to do this interview on the condition of anonymity.

Interviewers (I): When did u start acting as a school bully?

Respondent (R): In secondary 3 to secondary 4.

I: Who did you bully?

R: I only bullied 2. They were in secondary 1.

I: What did you do to them?

R: Usually I will ask them to buy food for me. Like in the canteen, they will go order for me and I never pay them. They will also follow me and my friend around. We [respondent and his friend] will ask them to pay for our things.

I: What kind of things do they pay? Will they always pay for you and your friend?

R: Like when we go play billiard, arcade [and] singing, they will pay. Ya, if they don’t pay, my friend will beat them up. We will shout at them and threaten them.

I: Did anybody know about it?

R: Don’t think so. Maybe some friends know but they dare not say anything. My friend is quite big-sized and fierce.

I: Why did you want to bully them?

R: I also don’t know. Just that my friend asks me to follow him and do whatever he does. He treats me well. My parents were in the midst of a divorce and had a lot of problems at home. He will cheer me up and bring me out. I also did not want any people to know what my family was going through so i think that’s why I acted brave in front of others.

I: So in the end, how did you stop being a bully? Were you counselled by teachers or what?

R: No lah. My teachers didn’t know. It’s because my friend dropped out of school and my cousin introduced me to Christianity. I realised what I did was wrong. My friend did contact me also but when I asked him to go to church with me, he scolded me and stopped calling.

From the above interview, we can see that the student had turned into a bully because he had some insecurities which he did not want to show and he was led astray by his peers. Teachers failed to notice that the student had become a bully as well.

Therefore, it is important for teachers and parents to pay more attention to students, especially when the students are undergoing difficult periods. For example, parents who are in the midst of going through divorce should not neglect their children’s wellbeing too.

 

Reasons why bullies bully

I recently discovered a website which is very helpful to understand why bullies bully. It can be found at www.whybulliesbully.com. Though the website is dedicated to bullying in the workplace, I believe the reasons stated can be applied to secondary school bullies.

Here are the reasons why bullies would bully:

• Lack of boundary setting

If boundaries are not set in early years, a child can find no limits and no inner security. This continues into adulthood.

• Insecurity

With a lack of boundary setting in childhood, adult bullies do not have secure feelings about who they are, their ‘true’ selves. -> This reason has been pointed out by Ms Rachel Loh, the social worker we previously interviewed

• Searching for recognition

So they constantly search for recognition for themselves. Their behaviour tends to be inconsistent, charming to some colleagues and evil to others. –> This reason has also been explained by Ms Loh too, with her reference to bigger-sized bullies 

• Lack of empathy

Research findings show that bullies may be able to read the emotional responses of others but lack empathy, the ability to relate to the feelings of others.

My thoughts: I believe this information will be helpful for parents or teacher as they talk to and counsel secondary school bullies. It is good to have some background before they assume anything.

 

 

Bullying is more likely to occur where:-

• Communication is poor and/or inconsistent.
• Stress cannot be acknowledged and anxieties become repressed.
• There are difficulties in assimilating difference.
• Expectations of performance are unrealistic.
• There is an over identification with targets.
• Management are unaware of how negative projections filter down the organisation generating dysfunctional behaviour on the way.

Research also indicates that bullying occurs around vacuums of support, where there are no clear boundaries and job descriptions are unclear.

My thoughts: I believe this will be essential when it comes to cultivating a class culture/family culture, to ensure that students have the right environment to study and grow, and one that avoids giving bullies a leeway to develop their bullying tendencies.

 

Gifted child a bully magnet?

Written by Denise

A study conducted by associate professfor, Jean Sunde Peterson, found that more than 2/3 of the studied gifted children was bullied in school and  almost 1/3 of them had violent thoughts of retaliating.

Peterson and some other experts said that their unique personality and interests might be what attracts them to the bullies. Furthermore, their source of good academic achievements create jealousy among the bullies. Even though these gifted child is cognitively well developed but not as well physically, emotionally and socially. It was also said that to be more sensitive and was more suscepticle to emotional demage during the process of being bullied. Hence, they were not able to handle that kind of stress.

Peterson said that one of her most alarming findings involved the frequency of violent thoughts. By eighth grade approximately 37 percent of boys and 23 percent of girls reported having unspecified violent thoughts in response to being bullied; 11 percent said they had resorted to violence to cope with the problem, often by striking a classmate.

 

Social dimensions to bullying?

Posted by: Vanessa Goh

In a study conducted by Children’s Society, it was found that there is almost an equal proportion of secondary boys and girls being bullied in school. It seems that both genders are equally vulnerable to school bullying.

However, there is a disparity when ethnicity is concerned. In the same study conducted, it was found that more Malay students are falling prey to school bullying as compared to Chinese, Indians and Others. One other finding that had surfaced is that bullies and victims usually belong to the same ethnic group.

Hopefully, these findings help to raise awareness among teachers and parents in looking out for school bullies and victims.

 

An interview with Ms Rachel Loh, social worker

Written by: Esther Chang

The following is an interview with Ms Rachel Loh, a social worker from one of the voluntary welfare organisations in Singapore conducted on 27 February 2010. She works with youths, mostly with school dropouts.

As part of our project, we managed to interview Ms Loh in order to better understand bullying situations, from the perspective of the bullies, and find out why people engage in bullying. At the same time, we sought advice for parents and teachers on how they can better handle bullying situations in school.

COM255: Why do you think secondary school students want to bully, be it physically, psychologically or emotionally, other students?

Rachel Loh: They want to exert their power. They find satisfaction from being strong and cool. It also gives them a sense of control.

COM255: Why do you think they need control or power?

RL: Because inside of them, they have many insecurities which they don’t want people to know.

COM255: So what do you think caused secondary school students to turn into bullies?

RL: There are many factors…. Friends and family play an important part. In their family, their parents may intimidate them, making them feel powerless. Also, their family may be physically and verbally abusive. Thus, they use bullying as an outlet to express their frustration at home.

COM255: How about friends?

RL: Sometimes people bully others due to peer pressure, especially if they join gangs. There is an inner want for the struggle of power, making them insecure. The act of bullying is one way to cover up their insecurities. Sometimes, when they are bigger in size, they bully too. Their physical size masks their insecurities.

COM255: We heard of girls verbally abusing their school mates in school. What do you think made these girls bullies then?

RL: They don’t want to appear vulnerable to others. So if they know they can talk very well, they will use this to verbally abuse other people, just to cover up their vulnerability.

COM255: Our last question… How do you think teachers and/or parents should handle secondary school students with the tendency to bully others?

RL: I think to deal with physical bullying, the teacher can have mediation sessions. They can have both parties apologising to each other but this must be done by a professional counsellor. The teacher can only facilitate mediation sessions if she or he has been trained to do it, if not they may not be able to handle difficult moments.

COM255: What should the parents do then?

RL: I think the parents side is a bit tricky because they have the tendency to side with their children. So, for this case, parents have to view the problem objectively. But this is still difficult. It’s harder for them to change perspective. I think the best is to let them understand the purpose of the mediation session.

COM255: How can the teachers help the bullies then in the meantime?

RL: I think have to let the bully know he or she is wrong. And also how to help the bullies face their inner issues rather than use outward actions to cover up.

COM255: Ok, thank you Ms Loh! Thank you for your time.

 

Wake-up call

Posted by: Vanessa Goh

I came across a news report on channel newsasia dated 6 June 2009 and found some alarming statistics. It was quoted that a study done by Children Society found that 1 in 5 primary students get bullied in school while 25% of secondary studnets get bullied.

I think that these statistics should serve as a wake-up call. School bullies are so prevalent in today’s context that 1 in 4 secondary students get bullied in one way or another. This issue definitely deserves more attention to it as it can be devastating for the next generation. What will the outcome be like if these 25% students go on to become school bullies?

In the similar news report, Minister of State Mrs Yu-Foo Yee Shoon said that teachers and parents play a crucial role to ensure that students who are bullied do not move on to become school bullies. I think that her concerns are not unfounded. Students who have been bullied before may have the misconception that bullying is part and parcel of school life and hence they may start to bully newcomers. In some cases, students who have been bullied before may think that they also have the right to bully others.

It will be disastrous if this issue is not tackled promptly. Teachers and parents may be the ones who can do the most to prevent the bullied from becoming bullies because they are the ones who interact the most with these students.

 

Some stories of being bullied (posted on Stomp)

Posted by: Esther Chang

Here are two stories of bullying which I extracted from Stomp portal which will be essential to understand how victims cope with bullying in secondary school and what sort of methods bullies will employ.

*****

deathgaze:
hmm.. yeah. bullies. i was an easy target during my primary and secondary school days..

imho, telling your parents or teachers doesn’t make the situation better. it’ll only make things worse. parents and teachers are not the police, you know..

most of the time i ended up crying to myself… “nothing but a bashing doll”. i would have retaliate but we all know usually bullies has links to secret societies.. well, at least during my time, it was the era of ah bengs everywhere… one wrong move and it’s on to “settle things beyond the classroom” if you know what i mean.. you’re considered lucky if you even managed to report to the authorities.. lol.

it’s no surprise why psychologists relate the victims’ feelings with “fear, pain, hatred, power.”
fear because they’ve been picked on.
pain because it really hurts.
hatred. the sight of these bullies just irritates the person.
power. “with power, things would be different”.

thank goodness those days are over. lol..

Stomp_Team:
Your Gen Y stories on bullying in schools over the past 2 Sundays have struck a chord in me.I was bullied when I was in Secondary 2, when I was a student in one of the top girls’ schools here. I’m now in JC2, but my experience in Sec 2 has made me extremely self conscious and sensitive to
others’ opinions of me, and there are still remnants of that today.

I have to admit, I had a little bit of an ‘attitude problem’ back then,
perhaps overeager to share what I knew with my classmates during lessons,
to the point of being show-off. There were also times when I was
insensitive, even making a groupmate cry when I strongly proclaimed my
opinion that her idea was not good enough to be used for our project, and
thus as group leader refused to use it.

All along I remained oblivous to my classmates’ true opinions about me as
they never mentioned anything to me, until one day when a girl (let’s call
her A) wrote her blog address on the blackboard in class. Out of
curiousity, I went to the blog, only to find unpleasant comments about
myself. I no longer remember exactly what they were, but I was extremely
shocked and hurt because I thought they were my friends right up till that
point of time. The discussion about me continued in the guestbook attached
to the blog:can you imagine what it feels like, to suddenly find out you’ve
been observed by your classmates every single second you’re within sight?
They had comments to make about every single action, every word I said and it felt as though everything I did was wrong, or unacceptable.

Soon, the mean comments spilled over into offline life too. A and her group
of friends, which made up about half the class, would talk about me in
front of me, as if I wasn’t even there. They said things like “Somebody
thinks she’s very smart” etc etc, or start s******ing, which I just knew was
directed at me, or are about me although the speaker may not
explicitly mention my name. It was the tone of voice as well as the words
that stung and cut into my heart.

The few friends I had in class advised me to ignore them, but that is
easier said than done,especially when you feel as strong a need to tell
your side of the story as I did then…

As the year went on I got depressed, and there were times when I would look down from the highest floor of the school building, and wonder what it would be like to jump down: would they regret? The only thing i could do
was weather the year out and hope that things would be better the next
year, so boy was i glad when in Sec 3, due to a difference in the subject
combinations I chose, I was posted to a class with entirely different
people save for 1 girl.

It was a fresh start, but the past didn’t let go that easily, because A and
her friends were quite popular throughout school and word about me had
already spread to the people in my class who were her friends, or linked to
them.They thus had preconceived notions about me. I’m glad I proved these
notions wrong.

There were times when a few in the class ridiculed my actions
and habits, once to the extent of taking digital photographs and posting
them, and spamming my blog tagboard. Once they even posted mean remarks in my cousin’s tagboard, just because his blog was linked to mine. However, the incidents were minor and I didn’t feel as depressed over them, partly
because of the strength I gained from my sec 2 experience and also because my best friends in the class supported me and assured me of myself.

The people who know what happened to me in sec 2 wonder at how I seem to be able to go on laughing as if nothing happened. They say I’m strong, but I think it’s weakened me a little because I’ve become slightly paranoid about pleasing people, for fear of a repeat of the sec 2 incident. I have this
urge to make sure that none of my actions can be criticised in that way,
the criticism over the smallest thing will make me extremely self
conscious, over whether it’s acceptable or not. I’ve become more
comfortable with myself as my friends are pretty open minded and wouldn’t
judge me just because of some eccentricities, but among people I’m not so
close with there’s still that paranoia, because I can’t forget how people
who seem to be okay with you may actually hate you.

I would be lying if I said I’m not upset over my sec 2 form teacher’s
failure to intervene, there was so much more she could have done, and it
would have helped if she had stepped in, but I realise that she might not
even have been aware that it was bullying, if she was even aware of the
actual situation at all–that it was not just the class being displeased
with me. Still, she made it seem like I was the one at fault, that it was
solely my character that caused the rift between my class and I, and that
made her very hard to approach to talk about the matter to.

I’d like people, educators and parents especially, to know that bullying is
not always obvious and detectable, especially the emotional kind which
girls are more likely to resort to. In every dispute in class, every case
of an ‘outcast’ from class who just can’t get along, things may not be what
they seem and an educator should deeper beneath the surface–there may just be a case of emotional bullying that is not immediately noticeable. It
could save a life, for I think someone else in my position then may have
really commited suicide to escape from all that.

Evon

******

From these two stories, I realise that in order for victims to speak up, their teachers and parents need to provide a supportive and non-judgmental environment for them to share. In these two cases, I note that one tried to tell the teacher about the hurtful name-callings but the teacher pushed the blame to the victim by saying that the victim is difficult to get along with.

What the teacher could have done is to look at both sides of the story. Perhaps the teacher may be busy with school work but the least she could do is to refer this case to a school counsellor.

 

Two Prominent Names

Written by Denise

In the process of searching for information on school bullying, I came across 2 persons whose names are constantly popping up. In Singapore, we have Esther Ng. Internationally, we have Dan Olweus.

Ms Esther Ng is a Child Specialist and an anti-bully activist who found the non-profit organisation “Coalition Against Bullying for Children and Youth” in 2005. From then on, this organisation has helped and support hundreds of students and parents. She was the winner of the Singapore Woman Award 2009. Four years ago, she did a survey on bullying and was horrified by what she found. Hence, Ms Ng decided to write a book to expose the extend of bullying in school. (Link)

Next, we have Dan Olweus. He is a Swedish and he was professor of psychology at the University of Bergen between 1970-1995. Also, he is an expertise in the research area of bully/victims among school chilldren and youths. Approximately 30 years of intensive research and intervention! Not only that, he had provided a first scientific study of bully/victim problems in the world! He is known as the pioneer and a founding father of bully/victim problems. (Link)

I am sure that there are many people out there who are trying to rectify bullying problems in school, but the reason why it is still prevalent is because it is not an easy task. Therefore, it is crucial for everyone of us to be vigilant and care for our children, students, friends who might be the bully/victim. If we were to detect the problem early, they would be able to receive help faster before things go out o control. Many small efforts go a long way. Maybe with that, we could decrease the school bullying statistic. =)

 

“Bully-cide”

Written by Denise

Constant bullying in the classroom could cause someone a decrease in confidence and develop a low self-esteem. In a worst case scenario, bullying might even lead to suicide.  This is a video I found on Youtube about a US teenage boy who had endured a long period of getting bullied shot himself after the bully told him that even of he were to shot himself, no one would care.

When the parents were interviewed, they were in the process of sueing the school for negligence and thus led to the death of their son. On the other hand, the school denied responsibility. Hence, this bring us to the main issue. Who should be accountable of the suicide of this fine young man? The parents? The classmates? The teachers? Or the school? It seems to me that no one wants to be responsible when all should be responsible for preventing such tragedy from happening in the first place.

What disturbed me the most was there were a few cases of suicide happened before and after the death of this teenager. Furthermore, two of them occurred in the same year as this teenager and nothing much was done!

This video served as a warning to us on how terrible a situation could go if bullying was at its worst, thus it is important for us to terminate such undesirable acts from happening in schools. Therefore, we have to help both the bullies and the bullied. At the same time, advocate how the other parties (teachers, parents, classmates and etc) could prevent school bullying from happening. No one should go through all these..

 

The bystanders

Written by Denise

When we talk about school bullying, we usually think of “the bullies” and “the bullied”. However, I came across this website that enlightened me on the group of students we often neglected – the bystanders. And more so on the effect of school bullying have on the bystanders.

There are interestingly seven types of students who are involved in a school bullying situation as indicated in the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program! All we know of are the two groups of students who bully and being bullied.

Let me list down the seven groups of students in a bullying circle:

1) The Leader – They are the ones who initiate the bullying acts; taking the lead role in bullying.

2) Followers – They are the cronies of the leader who take an active and positive role in bullying.

3) Supporters/Passive Bullies – They encourage bullying by giving positive feedbacks to the leader and followers though laughters for example, but they do not paricipate.

4) Passive Supporters/Potential Bullies – They like the idea of bullying but do not show obvious signs of support.

5) Disengaged Onlookers – They remain indifferent to the situation. Either they think it is none of their problems.

6) Possible Defenders – They dislike bullying acts but do nothing to stop it althoug they feel the need to help the victims. Perhaps, it is out of fear for their own safety, just in case they become one of the targeted victims.

7) Defenders – They take an active role in stopping the bullies and helpping the bullied.

The above stated are something informative for us and others to take note of in terms of school bullying.